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63 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
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Descartes' Principle
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I have reason to doubt my opinions that are not completely indubitable, so I have reason to reject all opinions if I have at least some doubt.
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Argument from Illusion
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1. The Way thing appear to the senses can be deceptive
2. In a ase where my sense deceive me, thing may appear just as they do when my senses are not deceiving me. C1. What I experience when I am being deceived and when I am not being deceived is the same thing 3. When I am being deceived, the experience falls short of what I draw from it. C2. So from C1, what I experienced falls short of what I draw whether I am deceived or not being deceived C3. My senses can never suply a certain knowledge of how things are |
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Cogito Ergo Sum
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If I convince myself that I exist, then I must, but if there could be an evil deceiver deceiving me, but I still must exist to be deceived.
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A thinking thing
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Sum Reg Cogitans; where I totally cease from thinking, I should totally cease to exist. I am not admitting except that I exist, so I am only a thing that thinks - doubts, understands, affirms, denies, is willing/unwilling, and imagines
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Descartes on what sensing really is
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I think I am sensing things even when I am asleep; it cannot be false that I am seeming to perceive it ~ in this term it is simply thinking
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Conceivability Principle
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The fact that I can understand of two things as separately is enough for them to be separate, since they are capable of being separated at least by God; I have a clear and distinct idea of myself and a clear and distinct idea of my body ~ I can exist without it
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Mind and Body as "Really Distinct"
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I am not present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship; I am very closely joined and intermingled with it. If I were merely a thinking thing, I would perceive pain in the intellect, but not feel it. The body is divisible, whereas the mind is individisible
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A Sailor in a Ship
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I am not merely present in my body as a sailor is present in a ship, but that I am very closely joined and intermingled with the body, sot hat it forms a unit
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The Bundle Theory of the Self
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The self is nothing, but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which concede each other with an inconceivable rapidity; they are successive perceptions only every perception is distinct; our imagination and memory string them together and make them seem seamless.
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Lichtenberg's Challenge
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According to Strawson, Cartiesians cannot explain why states of consciousness should be ascribed to anything at all. Descartes argues “I think , therefore I am’” but why is he entitled to anything more than “There is thinking”? What justifites including the “I” in “I think?
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Ryle against priviledged access
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1. a mind cannot help being constantly aware of all the suposed ccupants of its private stage; 2. The mind can deliberately scrutinize by a species of non-sensuous perception at least sme of its own states and operations - the awareness of one's states and operations of one's mind are incapable of being delusive
Ryle argues that there is no reason someone might not fail to recognize his frame of mind for what it is, (they do not notice the clock when it stops ticking or that they are dreaming) |
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The systematic elusiveness of "I"
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To concern oneself about onself is to perform a higher order act, just as it is to concern neself about anybody else
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"I" as an indexical
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I and you aren ot regular proper names nor are they irregular; simlar t the way 'today' is an ephemeral name of the current day; they are 'index words' that indicate to the hearer or read er the particular thing referred to; it will be impossible to describe what one has just done, because the commenting will never be directly on the commenting; it may be the focus of the next comment
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Nagel's Problem About "Being Somebody"
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The worlds is centerless, evne though there are various perspectives; none of us can occupy a metaphysically privileged position; but how can the fact that I view the world from my own point be included in suc a perspectiveless conception
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The Problem of Other Minds
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We observe in ourselves such occurrences as remembering, reasoning, feeling pleasure, and feeling pain; we do not think objects have these occurrences, but we now other people do, which means that the belief in the minds of ther requires a postulate tha tis not required for physics
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The Argument from Analogy
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We know from observation of ourselves that ‘A causes B,’ where A is thought and Bs ia physical occurrence. We sometimes observe a B when we cannot observe any A; we then infer an unobserved A. The behavior of other people is in many ways analogous to our own and we suppose that it must have analogous causes. Further difficulty: if we are supposed to know A causes B and if B occurred, to know that A also occurred, we must know that only A causes be; or if we are to infer that A is probably, it will suffice if we can know that in most cases it is A that causes. Russell says it’s like believing that thunder is caused by lightning even when can’t observe the lightning, because after we have observed many B’s all of which have been caused by A’s, it is likely that B’s are always caused by A’s
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Symptoms vs. Crteria
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Symptom - If I do not know how to establish that someone has pain, then how do I know that he has the same thing that I do when I have pain
Criteria - circumstances, behavior, and utterances are not merely evidence; they are actually one's criteria |
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The Concept of a Person as "Primitive"
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If I cannot understand what it is for others to undergo states of consciousness, then it is useless to speak of my own. The word "my" only gets its meaning from "not my," which is the primitiveness of the concept of a person; states of consciousness should be ascribed to the same thing as bodily characteristics
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P-predicates vs. M-predicates
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M-Predicates: things that are applied to the body, such as weight
P-Predicates: all other predicates we apply to people, (such as "is smiling") For some P-predicates, need to have criteria to correlate between the two, but we can only do this for ourselves and it was already said by Cartesianism that this cannot be true. |
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Chirholm's Criticism of Moore on "Could Have Done Otherwise"
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If might be true that a person was caused to do what he did, but it might still be true that if he had chosen otherwise, he would have done otherwise. Chisholm responds by saying that it isn’t true that if a person could have done otherwise, it does not necessarily mean he would have if he had chosen to; a person couldn’t have chosen to do otherwise, then even if (b) is true, (a) is not true
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Immanent vs. Transient Causation
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Immanent - an agent causes an event or a state of affairs
Transient - an even or state of affairs causes another The thing the agent immanently causes is some event in his brain. This even, in turn, causes his body to move by the changes in his muscles. Therefore, at least one of the events that are involved in the act is caused by the agent, so that is what we are responsible for. |
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The "Readiness Potential"
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Conscious awareness of an intention to act occurred about 200 milliseconds before the onset of muscle activation. (Measured by asking the subject to report the clock time at which they were aware of intending to act; the conclusion was that a person acts before they are consciously aware of it)
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TeTriggering Model of Action-Explanation
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Conscious will could be to serve as a ‘trigger’ that is required to enable the volitional process to proceed to final action; Libet is more dubious of this than the veto-power explanation, because there are at least some habitual, (yet voluntary), actions that occur with no conscious trigger at all
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A Person vs. A Wanton
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A wanton only has first-order desires, (basic desires and motivations); a person is capable of second-order volitions, (wanting the desire to have action X be his will); second-order desires are wanting to having the desire to do action X, not necessarily to act on it though
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Second-Order Volitions
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wanting the desire to have action X be his will); second-order desires, on the other hand, are wanting to having the desire to do action X, not necessarily to act on it though. A person has second-order volitions
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Frankfrut on Personhood and Free Will
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It is only because a person has second order volitions that he is capable both of enjoying and of lacking a free will. Freedom of action is the freedom to do what one wants to do. Analogously, the statement that a person enjoys freedom of the will means that he is free to will what he wants to will, or to have the will he wants. The assumption that a person is morally responsible for what he has done does not entail that the person was in te psotioon to have whatever will he wanted. Teis assumption does entiail that the person did what he did freely. It is a mistake, however, to believe that someone acts freely only when he is free to do whatever he watns. Even if he willed what he wanted, (second-order volition), it is quite irrelevant to the evaluation of his moral responsibility to inquire whether the alternatives that he opted against were actually available to him. (Were other options actually available, despite what he wanted to want)
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The Humean vs. the Platonic View of Reason
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two views about the role of reason in action. The Humean view: Reason is not a source of motivation, but a faculty of determining what is true and what is false. It could not supply motivation, but it could calculate how to fulfill those desires and serve those ends. The Platonic view: Reason is a source of motivation. The desires of reason are desires for good. Reason is an original spring of action, because valuing is essentially related to thinking or judging good that it is appropriate to speak of wants that are/arise from evaluations as belonging to/originating n the rational part of the soul; (the contrast is with desires, whose objects may not be thought good and which are, thus, in a natural sense, blind or irrational
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Watson on Desiring vs. Valuing
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Example: A woman who wants to drown her bawling infant, (desires to drown the infant, but values not drowning her infant). There is nothing in the specification of what an agent desires that singles out some wants as based upon that agent’s values. Rather, it has to do with why the agent wants what it does. For example, I may want to eat, because I want to be well-nourished; because I am hungry; or because eating is pleasant.
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Watson’s Criticism of Frankfurt
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Why does one necessarily care about one’s higher-order volitions? Since second-order volitions are themselves simply desire, to add them to the context of conflict is just to increase the number of contenders. The agent may not care which of the second-order desires win out. The same possibility arises at each higher order.
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Fatalism
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the doctrine that whatever will happen in the future is inevitable, so that there are no genuinely open alternatives. It is possible to be fatalist without being determinist, because even if the future course of events cannot be inferred from present circumstances and general laws, it still seems that the future course of events might be fixed and inalterable. If there are two alternatives, one man will inevitably be correct and one will be wrong. If this is true, nothing is or takes place fortuitously and there are no real alternatives. If things did not take place by necessity, an event might just as easily not happen as happen. If a thing is white now, it was true before to say that it would be white. If it was always true to say that a thing is or will be, it is not possible that it should not be or not be about to be that way.
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The Sea Battle Argument
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A sea battle must either take place tomorrow or not, but it is not necessary that it should take place tomorrow, neither its it necessary that it should not take place, yet it is necessary that it either should or should not take place tomorrow. Only the fact that one of the alternatives is necessary true, not which alternative.
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Epicurus’s Awareness Argument
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Death is nothing to us, because good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness. People that fear death, therefore, are foolish, because it will not be painful when it comes. It is only painful in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation.
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Nagel of Epicurus’s Questionable Assumption
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Nagel’s Natural View – Life is worth living even when the bad elements of experience are plentiful and the good ones are too meager to outweigh the bad ones on their own, because additional positive weight is supplied by experience itself. People might argue that there is no one to suffer the death and why should this be any worse than the state you were in before you were born? Nagel responds by saying that you have to know the history to tell if it’s a misfortune.
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The A-Series vs. The B-Series
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A-Series: Past/Present/Future; varies; B-Series: series of positions which run from earlier to later; relative to other occurrences, so remains the same
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McTaggart On Time and Change
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In order for there to be time, things must change; something may remain unchanged, but still other things changed relatively while it remained unchanged; a universe where nothing changed would be timeless; change only corresponds with a-series, where everything changes, because it is relative; b-series indicates permanent relations, so no moment could ever cease to be, nor could it become another moment; the A-series alone is insignificant, however, because nothing can be past, present, and future at the same time. It assumes the existence of time in order to account for the way in which moments are past, present, and future. Time then must be presupposed to account for the A series, but we have already seen that the A series has to be assumed in order o account for time.
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Chisolm's criticism of Moore on "could have done otherwise"
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If might be true that a person was caused to do what he did, but it might still be true that if he had chosen otherwise, he would have done otherwise. Chisholm responds by saying that it isn’t true that if a person could have done otherwise, it does not necessarily mean he would have if he had chosen to; a person couldn’t have chosen to do otherwise, then even if (b) is true, (a) is not true
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immanent vs. trasuent causation
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Chisolm; Immanent - an agent causes an event or a state of affairs
Transient - an even or state of affairs causes another The thing the agent immanently causes is some event in his brain. This even, in turn, causes his body to move by the changes in his muscles. Therefore, at least one of the events that are involved in the act is caused by the agent, so that is what we are responsible for. |
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purposive vs. nonpurposive explanation
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??
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necessary vs. contingent propositions
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???
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the principle of explanatory exclusion
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???
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simultaneous nomic equivalents
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???
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the "Readiness Potential"
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Conscious awareness of an intention to act occurred about 200 milliseconds before the onset of muscle activation. (Measured by asking the subject to report the clock time at which they were aware of intending to act; the conclusion was that a person acts before they are consciously aware of it)
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the trigering model of action-explanation
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Conscious will could be to serve as a ‘trigger’ that is required to enable the volitional process to proceed to final action; Libet is more dubious of this than the veto-power explanation, because there are at least some habitual, (yet voluntary), actions that occur with no conscious trigger at all
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a person vs. a wanton
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A wanton only has first-order desires, (basic desires and motivations); a person is capable of second-order volitions, (wanting the desire to have action X be his will); second-order desires are wanting to having the desire to do action X, not necessarily to act on it though
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second-order voltions
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wanting the desire to have action X be his will); second-order desires, on the other hand, are wanting to having the desire to do action X, not necessarily to act on it though. A person has second-order volitions
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Frankfurt on personhood and free will
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It is only because a person has second order volitions that he is capable both of enjoying and of lacking a free will. Freedom of action is the freedom to do what one wants to do. Analogously, the statement that a person enjoys freedom of the will means that he is free to will what he wants to will, or to have the will he wants. The assumption that a person is morally responsible for what he has done does not entail that the person was in te psotioon to have whatever will he wanted. Teis assumption does entiail that the person did what he did freely. It is a mistake, however, to believe that someone acts freely only when he is free to do whatever he watns. Even if he willed what he wanted, (second-order volition), it is quite irrelevant to the evaluation of his moral responsibility to inquire whether the alternatives that he opted against were actually available to him. (Were other options actually available, despite what he wanted to want)
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the Humean vs. the Platonic view of reason
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two views about the role of reason in action. The Humean view: Reason is not a source of motivation, but a faculty of determining what is true and what is false. It could not supply motivation, but it could calculate how to fulfill those desires and serve those ends. The Platonic view: Reason is a source of motivation. The desires of reason are desires for good. Reason is an original spring of action, because valuing is essentially related to thinking or judging good that it is appropriate to speak of wants that are/arise from evaluations as belonging to/originating n the rational part of the soul; (the contrast is with desires, whose objects may not be thought good and which are, thus, in a natural sense, blind or irrational
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Watson on desiring vs. valuing
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Example: A woman who wants to drown her bawling infant, (desires to drown the infant, but values not drowning her infant). There is nothing in the specification of what an agent desires that singles out some wants as based upon that agent’s values. Rather, it has to do with why the agent wants what it does. For example, I may want to eat, because I want to be well-nourished; because I am hungry; or because eating is pleasant.
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Watson's criticism of Frankfurt
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Why does one necessarily care about one’s higher-order volitions? Since second-order volitions are themselves simply desire, to add them to the context of conflict is just to increase the number of contenders. The agent may not care which of the second-order desires win out. The same possibility arises at each higher order.
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moral luck
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???
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fatalism
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the doctrine that whatever will happen in the future is inevitable, so that there are no genuinely open alternatives. It is possible to be fatalist without being determinist, because even if the future course of events cannot be inferred from present circumstances and general laws, it still seems that the future course of events might be fixed and inalterable. If there are two alternatives, one man will inevitably be correct and one will be wrong. If this is true, nothing is or takes place fortuitously and there are no real alternatives. If things did not take place by necessity, an event might just as easily not happen as happen. If a thing is white now, it was true before to say that it would be white. If it was always true to say that a thing is or will be, it is not possible that it should not be or not be about to be that way.
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the sea battle arguement
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A sea battle must either take place tomorrow or not, but it is not necessary that it should take place tomorrow, neither its it necessary that it should not take place, yet it is necessary that it either should or should not take place tomorrow. Only the fact that one of the alternatives is necessary true, not which alternative.
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the law of the excluded middle
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???
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the principle of bivalence
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???
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Epicurus' awareness arguement
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Death is nothing to us, because good and evil imply awareness, and death is the privation of all awareness. People that fear death, therefore, are foolish, because it will not be painful when it comes. It is only painful in the prospect. Whatever causes no annoyance when it is present, causes only a groundless pain in the expectation.
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Epicurus' time arguement
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???
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Lucretius' symmetry arguement
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???
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Nagel on Epicurus' questionable assumption
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Nagel’s Natural View – Life is worth living even when the bad elements of experience are plentiful and the good ones are too meager to outweigh the bad ones on their own, because additional positive weight is supplied by experience itself. People might argue that there is no one to suffer the death and why should this be any worse than the state you were in before you were born? Nagel responds by saying that you have to know the history to tell if it’s a misfortune.
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the A-series vs. the B-series
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A-Series: Past/Present/Future; varies; B-Series: series of positions which run from earlier to later; relative to other occurrences, so remains the same
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McTaggart
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In order for there to be time, things must change; something may remain unchanged, but still other things changed relatively while it remained unchanged; a universe where nothing changed would be timeless; change only corresponds with a-series, where everything changes, because it is relative; b-series indicates permanent relations, so no moment could ever cease to be, nor could it become another moment; the A-series alone is insignificant, however, because nothing can be past, present, and future at the same time. It assumes the existence of time in order to account for the way in which moments are past, present, and future. Time then must be presupposed to account for the A series, but we have already seen that the A series has to be assumed in order o account for time.
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the dimensional view of time
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???
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the dynamic view of time
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???
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"now" as an indexical
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????
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